The Gulf Region Tries to Play Fintech Catchup

Currently no Persian Gulf based cities are on Thomson Reuters top 20 fintech centres list as the region has yet to really take off; Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have both talked about being a leader in blockchain and a pioneer in fintech; regulation has hurt progress so far, though Dubai has begun to open up a little with their fintech sandbox project; “The banking system is opening up to adapt and include people here, but there’s still nothing like [the EU’s Payment Services Directive 2],” Dalal AlRayes, co-founder of Kuwaiti micro-savings platform Spare said to the FT. “You can’t just access data and connect the pieces together, we have to do more ourselves.” Source.